posted
Slaves back then cost what a car does today, a moderately expensive one, if you want any sort of rough comparison. Buying every slave in an effort to remove the market that way would have bankrupted the Union more than the war would've. Besides, it wouldn't have worked. Sick as it sounds, the south always would've retained a breeding stock. Best case scenario would've been to thin them down or rescue newborns from slavery. Hardly an effort that solves the problem, plus it funds your enemies.
quote:What!? You mean no one else has their 52" HD TV's as their monitors? How the heck do you play games?
lol, oh for a more perfect world Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote: They prevailed ten years later with the Slavery Abolition Act. To mollify slave owners, the British government paid compensation to owners of freed slaves, depending on the number of slaves that they had. For example, the Bishop of Exeter's 665 slaves resulted in him receiving £12,700.
posted
England never depended on slave labor like the Southern U.S. did, preferring instead to exploit the natives in its colonies.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
Different circumstances. I don't think the Bishop was going to go to war over it. Even if they had been compensated I don't think they would've chosen to go that route. It was a way of life. It was the way of life for thousands in the south. A lot of the smaller farms would probably have gone along with it, they probably would have taken the money, and then hired their one or two slaves back as labor. And that was the majority of slaveholders. But, the major slave holders wielded the power, and even large payouts would destroy their finances. Slaves were investments, especially at that level.
Declaring it illegal and then offering payouts probably would've started the war that day.
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quote:England never depended on slave labor like the Southern U.S. did, preferring instead to exploit the natives in its colonies.
You don't know your history very well. The English colonies on the North American continent were never very important to the English economy but the colonies in the Caribbean were extremely important and they were based entirely on slavery where over 90% of the population were slaves. At the time of the American revolution, sugar planters from the west Indies controlled over 25% of the seats in the British parliament and the British colonies in Jamaica and Barbados were the wealthiest and most profitable of any colonies that ever belonged to the empire. The abolition of slavery in England really meant the abolition of slavery in the British West Indies. The abolition of slavery in England devastated the economy of the British West Indies and they have never recovered.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
Keep in mind that the Constitution was meant to end slavery by barring importation after a few decades, which the South asked for so their economy wouldn't be devastated. But rather than transition to hired labor, they transitioned to a family population rather than importing adult men and working them to death.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:The English colonies on the North American continent were never very important to the English economy but the colonies in the Caribbean were extremely important and they were based entirely on slavery where over 90% of the population were slaves.
You're absolutely right. I mis-spoke. At the time of the American Civil War, the British Empire didn't depend on slave labor like the American South did, because they had chosen other ways to exploit people.
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posted
It's a moot point, as there is no way they'd sell them all, any more than we'd sell off the infrastructure of our economy.
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posted
This is actually a fairly ancient debate, and I'm pretty sure the answer boils down to this: yes, we could have eventually purchased all the slaves out of slavery, but it would have taken many more generations and a war would probably have happened anyway, for other reasons.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
The seccession happened not as a result of slavery being attempted to be abolished but because Abraham Lincoln got elected on not on a abolitionist platform but on simply preventing the spread of slavery by having the new territories have slavery and its trade illegal. Many moderates believed that slavery was dying but if it could expand it would take long thus it was imparitive to stranngle the growth of slavery so it would die its own natural death and be dumped into the ashheap of history where it belongs.
The south seceeded due to lincolns election and their perception of abolitionist forces controlling the government, it was a fairly inevitable event.
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posted
I think it's an important debate as we grapple with immigration, which is also a matter of labor and moral destiny. I hope there isn't a war within the question, though.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:Originally posted by pooka: Keep in mind that the Constitution was meant to end slavery by barring importation after a few decades, which the South asked for so their economy wouldn't be devastated. But rather than transition to hired labor, they transitioned to a family population rather than importing adult men and working them to death.
I can never remember if it's 1807 or 1809, I know it was set for 20 years after the Constitution was ratified, but then I get that date mixed up too. I think it was 1809. Sort of an empty promise since at that point the South had a breeding stock more or less to keep slaves flowing without needing to bring any in from Africa. Still, better late than never. I don't think that was ever intended to end slavery, it was a compromise to end the slave trade, which the north wanted to do, and the south refused to sign the document with that provision, so they compromised.
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posted
Lincoln's war wasn't about slavery any more than the Iraq War was about WMDs. He was basically a Whig, despite having been elected as a Republican, and was absolutely dedicated to a vision of government where a strong central government controlled everything.
Anyone who doesn't like the empire this country has become can blame Lincoln for it. That sort of rampant statism wasn't his invention -- it had been a matter of fierce debate since the US came into being -- but he was the one who established it.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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It might not have been ABOUT slavery, but the war simply does not happen without the question of slavery.
Posts: 4112 | Registered: May 2001
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posted
I don't think that's true. Slavery was a useful issue, and Lincoln was a skilled politician. The South had been abused by the federal government for a long time on economic issues, and there were voices in favor of secession for reasons having nothing to do with slavery. New England talked about seceding as well for quite a while, and it also had nothing to do with slavery. Nor was it considered something they didn't have the right to do.
Lincoln brought a heavy boot to the presidency, and the South had simply had enough. Every single grievance listed in the Declaration of Independence was applicable to federal abuses in the South as it had been to English abuses in the colonies. The American Revolution was a war of independence from a tyranny. So was the failed war of independence that was waged by the South.
Had the Brits won in 1776, I'm quite sure they would have chalked the abortive colonial insurrection up to reasons that made the colonists look like the bad guys as well.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Lisa: Every single grievance listed in the Declaration of Independence was applicable to federal abuses in the South as it had been to English abuses in the colonies.
Have you read the declaration of independence lately. Here are a few of the grievances list in it. When did the US federal government commit any of these grievances against the southern states.
quote:For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
How and when did the US government do any of those things in the Southern state prior to their secession from the Union?
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
I withdraw the "every single". And he did most of that during the war. But anyone who thinks that the war wouldn't have happened had it not been for slavery should read this.
Posts: 12266 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Well, yes. The south declared war on his country. He waged war against them.
Some others you left off the list...
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
And, of course, the declaration gets a lot of its moral weight from statements after the list of transgressions... "In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury."
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posted
Comparing the way the US government treated the southern states after they seceded and attacked US forts to the way the British government treated the colonies before they declared their independence is hardly reasonable.
The treatment of the confederate states by the US government after their secession can hardly be considered the cause of the secession, at least not be anyone who agrees with the principle that causes precede effects.
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